Wednesday, July 01, 2009

For a Canada in which we may once again freely measure, represent, debate and enact a shared reality

It's "Canada Day", and while I have not made much time recently for blogging, this will soon change. But to that end, maybe it's time for a little stock taking. Where are we, as a nation, going, given the political culture of this country? A recent Mark Steyn piece provides a useful glimpse, if only for a moment on a beautiful day not to be completely wasted by our culture's political insanities: Blazing Cat Fur: Hey Jennifer Lynch- Coming to a newstand near you....

Canada, it seems, has become a country where the policing of those who might say things mildly critical of the reigning religion are told to shut up, or else lose their jobs, reputation, etc. It's a country where parliamentarians cannot respond rationally - they cannot even begin to recognize - arguments that "human rights" commissions are actually destroyers not defenders of real human rights.I could and will in future expand on the Gnostic religion that is so afraid of hearing criticism, or even alternative conceptualizations, of its world view - lest the Gnostic's trips into an unreality where his Utopian desires must not, or so his faith tells him, be obscured by the lesser men who have come before him, be indeed exposed to some of the resistant facts of a fallen world that is not and cannot be as our Messianic or Maternal visions would remake it.But for the moment, for those who want to take up the question seriously, I will take my time for reflection and point you towards Tom Bertonneau's latest in the Brussels Journal, for he so ably takes up the task of elucidating the Gnostic mentality, its hysterical reactions to criticism, to those whose common sense presents stumbling blocks to the great visionaries. He takes us further in understanding the Gnostic's need for a puritanical speech code.

But, as Bertonneau concludes, a refusal of a political religion to come to terms with contrary realities cannot last forever. The world, as it actually is, wins out in the end. So this period in our national history may be coming to some kind of collapse into a future we cannot know and which we must prepare ourselves to meet, should we wish to live in a nation bound by covenants and not just one or another's dark and destructive will to power:

One can predict, generally, that the radical spasm through which Europe and North America are now passing will eventually remit. De-creation can only be called creation for so long before the fraud becomes undeniable and the masses become disenchanted with their formerly charismatic leaders.

The trouble for all of us is that, in the meantime, in “the weird, ghostly atmosphere of a lunatic asylum,” as Voegelin writes, the agitating elites can wreak enormous harm.[...]Quite apart from election results, the extremism and intolerance of those currently in power polarizes the society increasingly, day by day, with no terminus of the process in sight; nor will their polarizing activities cease, should they lose their majority. Gnostic propaganda is nowadays organized as a colossal communications-network. Certainly American society is therefore in the rhetorical phase of a civil war, or perhaps in the policy phase, now that liberals have the votes to justify their schemes and do as they please. Even if the USA did not advance to some kind of actual civil war, the damage to civic institutions and to trust among people will have been, as it already is, profound and lasting.

One might agree with Voegelin, who was writing sixty years ago, that, “the end of the Gnostic dream is perhaps closer at hand than one ordinarily would assume.” But this need not mean that the aftermath will resemble the status quo ante, or be in any way familiar to those who, during the period of nightmare, held fast to the truth of the soul.